Feuilly

"Mmmhm, I thought you might." She purses her lips again when he digs into the soup, but settles for an audible under-the-breath Well, what do you expect, who's going to go around teaching foundlings manners. "You can stay down here in the kitchen if you want. It's warmer here. Do you think you'll get one of those little stoves for your room up there? You'll have to pay for the good ones, the cheap ones can kill you, maybe burn down the whole house while they're at it. I always thought they were trouble but it's true those rooms do get cold up there. If you do get one, I know a man who--"

There's a sudden urgent knock on the kitchen door and it swings open, a woman of of forty or fifty stepping through in the middle of a sentence of her own: "--Mere Bernard, look, did you see Feuilly go out, I went up to his room and--oh!"

She stares. "There you are. What's going on? When you weren't at work I got to worrying! Are you sick? --Is he sick? Good God, Mere Bernard, I asked the boss to let me run back and check on him, and when I didn't hear any noise in his room I thought Jesus he's dead, he's got what killed poor Manon and all of them and I was just about dead myself from fright opening the door, but here he is! Eating soup! Here you are!"